Haiti progress linked to security, Canadian diplomat says in appeal to donor institutions

There is no shortage of urgent needs in Haiti, where kidnappings are spiking at an alarming rate, entire neighborhoods are being emptied by clashing gangs, and once peaceful rural communities are increasingly becoming cauldrons of violence as armed groups spread their turmoil outside the capital.

This reality, along with the ongoing collapse of the country’s already fragile healthcare system and the continued loss of jobs due to the escalating violence, underscore the need to restore security in the country, according to a United Nations advisory group on Haiti and Canada’s chief representative to the world agency.

“The consensus is extremely strong that the economic and social conditions in Haiti will only improve once there is security,” Robert “Bob” Rae, the permanent representative of Canada to the United Nations and chair of the Economic and Social Council on Haiti, told the Miami Herald.

“Everything is linked,” Rae said. “Security is linked to the political situation, and to the need for a credible plan for transition to a new government. And the financial view is the same… it’s very difficult to find conditions for investment and for improving the conditions of people without dealing with the security issue.”

Three months after the U.N. Security Council approved sending a foreign armed force to Haiti, led by Kenya, the timetable on when exactly that help will arrive remains uncertain.

Kenya’s supreme court will hear legal challenge on Jan. 26 brought by opposition groups trying to stop the deployment of 1,000 police officers to the Caribbean country. In Washington, a planned donors conference to finance the operation still hasn’t happened. And in Port-au-Prince, the government has yet to sign a necessary military agreement with Kenya outlining the security arrangement with Kenya.

Meanwhile, the number of foreign troops that will ultimately be involved in the mission remains a mystery, as interested countries wait for both the U.S.-led donor conference and the legal challenge in Kenya to be cleared up before finalizing their contributions.

The slow pace of the planning is creating doubts among some Haitians about the arrival of help, though the country’s police chief, Frantz Elbé, and Judicial Police Director Frédéric Leconte returned from Nairobi on Sunday after a brief visit. The trip occurred after a Kenya delegation visited Port-au-Prince, which one source described as “more of a courtesy” than planning visit.

Meanwhile, gang violence continues to grip the country. Since last week, armed clashes near the U.S. Embassy in Tabarre and the nearby police academy have made the area a high-risk security zone. To the south of Port-au-Prince, attacks in the Mariani neighborhood of Carrefou, continue to keep residents trapped.

The renewed attacks on neighborhoods have forced some 200,000 people to flee their homes, a tenfold increase in two years, the U.N. says. More than 2,500 Haitians have been killed this year, and over 900 kidnapped.

In a statement on Monday, the advisory group on Haiti appealed for international financial institutions to redouble their assistance to the country. That includes more support from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, Inter-American Development Bank, Organization of American States and the Pan American Health Organization, the Americas regional office for the World Health Organization.

Rae said the group recently met with representatives of the institutions to discuss the situation in Haiti. Separately, the ambassadors and deputy permanent representatives, who represent several countries, also met with María Isabel Salvador, the head of the U.N. Integrated Office in Haiti, and the Secretary-General’s deputy representative and chief humanitarian coordinator, Ulrika Richardson.

“There’s so much evidence of hardship, increased malnutrition, increasing crisis of malnutrition,” Rae said. “The other thing we talked a lot about are the need for justice reform, and a comprehensive plan for Haiti that requires a new approach to dealing with gangs, diverting kids from gangs.“

Rae said the advisory group isn’t directly engaged in the discussions around the Kenyan-led Multinational Security Support Mission. However, like Canada, they support the deployment of armed forces to help the Haitian police control gangs. This will help create breathing room for both Haitians and donors trying to tackle the development challenges.

Rae said concerns about Haiti’s ongoing brain drain came up repeatedly in conversations concerning the ability of the Haiti National Police to root out gangs. The agency, which is currently preparing for the retirement of a new wave of veteran officers, has lost at least 1,600 police officers in the last year, Rae said.

Many of the cops are among the more than 112,000 Haitians who have traveled to the United States under the two-year humanitarian parole program launched by the Biden administration in January, according to the latest figures from the Department of Homeland \ Security. Others left the country as their U.S. visa was expiring, or fled to Canada.

“This is really, one of the human tragedies of the situation,” said Rae, speaking for his own country, which earlier this year in an immigration deal with the Biden administration announced a program to take in 15,000 migrants from the Western Hemisphere on humanitarian grounds. “People who are facing real difficulty with the security often feel compelled to leave for the benefit of their families and they don’t see a light at the end of the road for them. They feel they have to get out in order to take care of themselves and take care of their families. It’s pretty, it’s pretty hard for a country like Canada to say ‘No, sorry, you can’t come in.’ ...We’re not going to impose a country ban on people coming to Canada from Haiti.”

Rae, who has a background as a mediator, stressed the need for Haiti’s political class and elite to prioritize the Haitian people, and finally come together to help address the myriad of challenges.

“It’s up to the Haitian political leaders themselves to figure out how they’re going to solve this problem, because it is a critical issue. And it’s very easy to blame those people who tried to help, but quite honestly, it’s the elite themselves that have to look in the mirror and understand what has to be done,” he said. “In our advisory group, we keep saying, ‘Look, we can identify the problems but we can only mobilize international support at the level that’s required.”

Two years after the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, Prime Minister Ariel Henry and members of the opposition and civil society groups have yet to forge a political consensus that the international community says is necessary to create a pathway to new elections. A visit this month by three former prime ministers from the Caribbean Community without a negotiated political deal in place.

“I keep saying this and sometimes I don’t think it’s quite very popular. But there’s a huge responsibility on the Haitian elite,” Rae said. “Many members of the Haitian elite have left the country. They continue to have economic interests in the country, but they don’t live there. When that starts to happen, any country in the world is going to be in deep trouble. You’ve got to develop a program in which the leaders of the country are committed to and that’s an ongoing challenge. To be honest, that is a real challenge.”